The Wendigo - Algernon Blackwood
THE WENDIGO
Algernon Blackwood
1910
I
A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without
finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and
the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families
with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr.
Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought
instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the
bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was
interested in other things besides moose--amongst them the vagaries of
the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his
book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided
once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part
in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....
Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, his
nephew, a divinity student destined for the "Wee Kirk" (then on his
first visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, Defago.
Joseph Defago was a French "Canuck," who had strayed from his native
Province of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage when
the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition to
his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also sing
the old _voyageur_ songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the
bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell
which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the
wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to
an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him--whence,
doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries.
On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice. Hank knew him and
swore by him. He also swore at him, "jest as a pal might," and since he
had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, the
conversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of a
rather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hank
agreed to dam a little out of respect for his old "hunting boss," Dr.
Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the country
as "Doc," and also because he understood that young Simpson was already
a "bit of a parson." He had, however, one objection to Defago, and one
only--which was, that the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hank
described as "the output of a cursed and dismal mind," meaning
apparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and suffered
fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him to
utter speech. Defago, that is to say, was imaginative and melancholy.
And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of "civilization" that induced
the attacks, for a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them.
This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the last
week in October of that "shy moose year" 'way up in the wilderness north
of Rat Portage--a forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, an
Indian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting trips
in previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay in
camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a few
minutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him by
former patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin, he
looked in these city garments no more like a real redskin than a stage
Negro looks like a real African. For all that, however, Punk had in him
still the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn silence and his
endurance survived; also his superstition.
The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a week
had passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself.
Defago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in bad
humor, reminded him so often that "he kep' mussing-up the fac's so, that
it was 'most all nothin' but a petered-out lie," that the Frenchman had
finally subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed likely to
break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were fairly done after an exhausting
day. Punk was washing up the dishes, grunting to himself under the
lean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No one troubled to stir
the slowly dying fire. Overhead the stars were brilliant in a sky quite
wintry, and there was so little wind that ice was already forming
stealthily along the shores of the still lake behind them. The silence
of the vast listening forest stole forward and enveloped them.
Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice.
"I'm in favor of breaking new ground tomorrow, Doc," he observed with
energy, looking across at his employer. "We don't stand a dead Dago's
chance around here."
"Agreed," said Cathcart, always a man of few words. "Think the idea's
good."
"Sure pop, it's good," Hank resumed with confidence. "S'pose, now, you
and I strike west, up Garden Lake way for a change! None of us ain't
touched that quiet bit o' land yet--"
"I'm with you."
"And you, Defago, take Mr. Simpson along in the small canoe, skip across
the lake, portage over into Fifty Island Water, and take a good squint
down that thar southern shore. The moose 'yarded' there like hell last
year, and for all we know they may be doin' it agin this year jest to
spite us."
Defago, keeping his eyes on the fire, said nothing by way of reply. He
was still offended, possibly, about his interrupted story.
"No one's been up that way this year, an' I'll lay my bottom dollar on
_that!_" Hank added with emphasis, as though he had a reason for
knowing. He looked over at his partner sharply. "Better take the little
silk tent and stay away a couple o' nights," he concluded, as though the
matter were definitely settled. For Hank was recognized as general
organizer of the hunt, and in charge of the party.
It was obvious to anyone that Defago did not jump at the plan, but his
silence seemed to convey something more than ordinary disapproval, and
across his sensitive dark face there passed a curious expression like a
flash of firelight--not so quickly, however, that the three men had not
time to catch it.
"He funked for some reason, _I_ thought," Simpson said afterwards in the
tent he shared with his uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply,
although the look had interested him enough at the time for him to make
a mental note of it. The expression had caused him a passing uneasiness
he could not quite account for at the moment.
But Hank, of course, had been the first to notice it, and the odd thing
was that instead of becoming explosive or angry over the other's
reluctance, he at once began to humor him a bit.
"But there ain't no _speshul_ reason why no one's been up there this
year," he said with a perceptible hush in his tone; "not the reason you
mean, anyway! Las' year it was the fires that kep' folks out, and this
year I guess--I guess it jest happened so, that's all!" His manner was
clearly meant to be encouraging.
Joseph Defago raised his eyes a moment, then dropped them again. A
breath of wind stole out of the forest and stirred the embers into a
passing blaze. Dr. Cathcart again noticed the expression in the guide's
face, and again he did not like it. But this time the nature of the look
betrayed itself. In those eyes, for an instant, he caught the gleam of a
man scared in his very soul. It disquieted him more than he cared to
admit.
"Bad Indians up that way?" he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a
little, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved
off to bed with a prodigious yawn; "or--or anything wrong with the
country?" he added, when his nephew was out of hearing.
Hank met his eye with something less than his usual frankness.
"He's jest skeered," he replied good-humouredly. "Skeered stiff about
some ole feery tale! That's all, ain't it, ole pard?" And he gave Defago
a friendly kick on the moccasined foot that lay nearest the fire.
Defago looked up quickly, as from an interrupted reverie, a reverie,
however, that had not prevented his seeing all that went on about him.
"Skeered--_nuthin'!_" he answered, with a flush of defiance. "There's
nuthin' in the Bush that can skeer Joseph Defago, and don't you forget
it!" And the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible to
know whether he told the whole truth or only a part of it.
Hank turned towards the doctor. He was just going to add something when
he stopped abruptly and looked round. A sound close behind them in the
darkness made all three start. It was old Punk, who had moved up from
his lean-to while they talked and now stood there just beyond the circle
of firelight--listening.
"'Nother time, Doc!" Hank whispered, with a wink, "when the gallery
ain't stepped down into the stalls!" And, springing to his feet, he
slapped the Indian on the back and cried noisily, "Come up t' the fire
an' warm yer dirty red skin a bit." He dragged him towards the blaze and
threw more wood on. "That was a mighty good feed you give us an hour or
two back," he continued heartily, as though to set the man's thoughts on
another scent, "and it ain't Christian to let you stand out there
freezin' yer ole soul to hell while we're gettin' all good an' toasted!"
Punk moved in and warmed his feet, smiling darkly at the other's
volubility which he only half understood, but saying nothing. And
presently Dr. Cathcart, seeing that further conversation was impossible,
followed his nephew's example and moved off to the tent, leaving the
three men smoking over the now blazing fire.
It is not easy to undress in a small tent without waking one's
companion, and Cathcart, hardened and warm-blooded as he was in spite of
his fifty odd years, did what Hank would have described as "considerable
of his twilight" in the open. He noticed, during the process, that Punk
had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that Hank and Defago were
at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little French
Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage
picture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces with
patches of alternate red and black; Defago, in slouch hat and moccasins
in the part of the "badlands" villain; Hank, open-faced and hatless,
with that reckless fling of his shoulders, the honest and deceived hero;
and old Punk, eavesdropping in the background, supplying the atmosphere
of mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed the details; but at the same
time something deep within him--he hardly knew what--shrank a little, as
though an almost imperceptible breath of warning had touched the surface
of his soul and was gone again before he could seize it. Probably it was
traceable to that "scared expression" he had seen in the eyes of Defago;
"probably"--for this hint of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped his
usually so keen analysis. Defago, he was vaguely aware, might cause
trouble somehow ...He was not as steady a guide as Hank, for
instance ... Further than that he could not get ...
He watched the men a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tent
where Simpson already slept soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like a
mad African in a New York nigger saloon; but it was the swearing of
"affection." The ridiculous oaths flew freely now that the cause of
their obstruction was asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderly
upon his comrade's shoulder, and they moved off together into the
shadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering. Punk, too, a moment
later followed their example and disappeared between his odorous
blankets in the opposite direction.
Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and sleep still fighting
in his mind with an obscure curiosity to know what it was that had
scared Defago about the country up Fifty Island Water way,--wondering,
too, why Punk's presence had prevented the completion of what Hank had
to say. Then sleep overtook him. He would know tomorrow. Hank would tell
him the story while they trudged after the elusive moose.
Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audaciously in
the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glass
beneath the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of night that
poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messages
from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay
already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter. White men, with their
dull scent, might never have divined them; the fragrance of the wood
fire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints of
moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and
Defago, subtly in league with the soul of the woods as they were, would
probably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain....
But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old Punk crept from his
blankets and went down to the shore of the lake like a shadow--silently,
as only Indian blood can move. He raised his head and looked about him.
The thick darkness rendered sight of small avail, but, like the animals,
he possessed other senses that darkness could not mute. He
listened--then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hemlock stem he stood
there. After five minutes again he lifted his head and sniffed, and yet
once again. A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself by
no outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the keen air. Then, merging
his figure into the surrounding blackness in a way that only wild men
and animals understand, he turned, still moving like a shadow, and went
stealthily back to his lean-to and his bed.
And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred
gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far
ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the
direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp
with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that
was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of
night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian's hair-like
nerves, there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, an
odor of something that seemed unfamiliar--utterly unknown.
The French Canadian and the man of Indian blood each stirred uneasily in
his sleep just about this time, though neither of them woke. Then the
ghost of that unforgettably strange odor passed away and was lost among
the leagues of tenantless forest beyond.
II
In the morning the camp was astir before the sun. There had been a
light fall of snow during the night and the air was sharp. Punk had done
his duty betimes, for the odors of coffee and fried bacon reached every
tent. All were in good spirits.
"Wind's shifted!" cried Hank vigorously, watching Simpson and his guide
already loading the small canoe. "It's across the lake--dead right for
you fellers. And the snow'll make bully trails! If there's any moose
mussing around up thar, they'll not get so much as a tail-end scent of
you with the wind as it is. Good luck, Monsieur Defago!" he added,
facetiously giving the name its French pronunciation for once, "_bonne
chance!_"
Defago returned the good wishes, apparently in the best of spirits, the
silent mood gone. Before eight o'clock old Punk had the camp to
himself, Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards,
while the canoe that carried Defago and Simpson, with silk tent and grub
for two days, was already a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the lake,
going due east.
The wintry sharpness of the air was tempered now by a sun that topped
the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world of
lake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling spray
that the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun and
popped smartly out of sight again; and as far as eye could reach rose
the leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its lonely sweep and
grandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty and
unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay.
Simpson, who saw it all for the first time as he paddled hard in the
bows of the dancing canoe, was enchanted by its austere beauty. His
heart drank in the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his lungs
drank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind him in the stern seat,
singing fragments of his native chanties, Defago steered the craft of
birch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all his
companion's questions. Both were gay and light-hearted. On such
occasions men lose the superficial, worldly distinctions; they become
human beings working together for a common end. Simpson, the employer,
and Defago the employed, among these primitive forces, were simply--two
men, the "guider" and the "guided." Superior knowledge, of course,
assumed control, and the younger man fell without a second thought into
the quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed of objecting when
Defago dropped the "Mr.," and addressed him as "Say, Simpson," or
"Simpson, boss," which was invariably the case before they reached the
farther shore after a stiff paddle of twelve miles against a head wind.
He only laughed, and liked it; then ceased to notice it at all.
For this "divinity student" was a young man of parts and character,
though as yet, of course, untraveled; and on this trip--the first time
he had seen any country but his own and little Switzerland--the huge
scale of things somewhat bewildered him. It was one thing, he realized,
to hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While to
dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, an
initiation that no intelligent man could undergo without a certain
shifting of personal values hitherto held for permanent and sacred.
Simpson knew the first faint indication of this emotion when he held the
new.303 rifle in his hands and looked along its pair of faultless,
gleaming barrels. The three days' journey to their headquarters, by lake
and portage, had carried the process a stage farther. And now that he
was about to plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness where they were
camped into the virgin heart of uninhabited regions as vast as Europe
itself, the true nature of the situation stole upon him with an effect
of delight and awe that his imagination was fully capable of
appreciating. It was himself and Defago against a multitude--at least,
against a Titan!
The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests rather
overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality
of the tangled backwoods which can only be described as merciless and
terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon,
and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his
own utter helplessness. Only Defago, as a symbol of a distant
civilization where man was master, stood between him and a pitiless
death by exhaustion and starvation.
It was thrilling to him, therefore, to watch Defago turn over the canoe
upon the shore, pack the paddles carefully underneath, and then proceed
to "blaze" the spruce stems for some distance on either side of an
almost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown in, "Say,
Simpson, if anything happens to me, you'll find the canoe all correc' by
these marks;--then strike doo west into the sun to hit the home camp
agin, see?"
It was the most natural thing in the world to say, and he said it
without any noticeable inflexion of the voice, only it happened to
express the youth's emotions at the moment with an utterance that was
symbolic of the situation and of his own helplessness as a factor in it.
He was alone with Defago in a primitive world: that was all. The canoe,
another symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to be left behind. Those
small yellow patches, made on the trees by the axe, were the only
indications of its hiding place.
Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them, each man carrying his own
rifle, they followed the slender trail over rocks and fallen trunks and
across half-frozen swamps; skirting numerous lakes that fairly gemmed
the forest, their borders fringed with mist; and towards five o'clock
found themselves suddenly on the edge of the woods, looking out across a
large sheet of water in front of them, dotted with pine-clad islands of
all describable shapes and sizes.
"Fifty Island Water," announced Defago wearily, "and the sun jest goin'
to dip his bald old head into it!" he added, with unconscious poetry;
and immediately they set about pitching camp for the night.
In a very few minutes, under those skilful hands that never made a
movement too much or a movement too little, the silk tent stood taut and
cozy, the beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fire
burned with the minimum of smoke. While the young Scotchman cleaned the
fish they had caught trolling behind the canoe, Defago "guessed" he
would "jest as soon" take a turn through the Bush for indications of
moose. "_May_ come across a trunk where they bin and rubbed horns," he
said, as he moved off, "or feedin' on the last of the maple leaves"--and
he was gone.
His small figure melted away like a shadow in the dusk, while Simpson
noted with a kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him into
herself. A few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible.
Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the trees stood somewhat
apart, well spaced; and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple,
spearlike and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock.
But for occasional prostrate monsters, and the boulders of grey rock
that thrust uncouth shoulders here and there out of the ground, it might
well have been a bit of park in the Old Country. Almost, one might have
seen in it the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began the
great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real
character--_brule_, as it is called, where the fires of the previous
year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt and
ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into the
ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and
rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about it.
The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the
fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the
only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that
vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the
woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might
stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. In front,
through doorways pillared by huge straight stems, lay the stretch of
Fifty Island Water, a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from tip
to tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were camped. A sky of
rose and saffron, more clear than any atmosphere Simpson had ever
known, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, where
the islands--a hundred, surely, rather than fifty--floated like the
fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests
fingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as
the light faded--about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the
heavens instead of the currents of their native and desolate lake.
And strips of colored cloud, like flaunting pennons, signaled their
departure to the stars....
The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fish
and burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and at
the same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back of
his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference
to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of
man. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that even Defago had gone,
came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of his
companion's returning footsteps.
There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly
comprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him:
"What should I--_could_ I, do--if anything happened and he did not come
back--?"
They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish,
and drinking unmilked tea strong enough to kill men who had not covered
thirty miles of hard "going," eating little on the way. And when it was
over, they smoked and told stories round the blazing fire, laughing,
stretching weary limbs, and discussing plans for the morrow. Defago was
in excellent spirits, though disappointed at having no signs of moose to
report. But it was dark and he had not gone far. The _brule_, too, was
bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal. Simpson, watching
him, realized with renewed vividness their position--alone together in
the wilderness.